From the BBC. Brian Aldiss, the “grand old man” of science fiction whose writing has shaped the genre since he was first published in the 1950s, has died at the age of 92. Aldiss’s agent, Curtis Brown, and his son, Tim Aldiss, have announced that the author, artist, poet and memoirist died at home in Oxford in the early hours of 19 August. “Brian had celebrated his birthday with close friends and family and spoken to many close to him,” wrote Tim on Twitter as he announced the death of “our beloved father and grandfather”. Aldiss was the author of science fiction classics including Non-Stop, Hothouse and Greybeard, as well as the Helliconia trilogy, which his agent said bridged “the gap between classic science fiction and contemporary literature”. His numerous short stories include Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, which was adapted into the Steven Spielberg film AI, while his Horatio Stubbs saga was based on his time during the war in Burma and the far east. Aldiss was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Hugo and Nebula prizes for science fiction and fantasy, an honorary doctorate from the University of Reading, the title of grand master from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and an OBE for services to literature. In a 2013 profile of Aldiss for the Guardian, Stuart Kelly described him as “the grand old man of British science fiction”, saying that “few writers have contributed more” to speculative fiction. In an introduction to a new edition of Hothouse, Neil Gaiman described Aldiss’s career as “enormous”. “It has recapitulated British SF, always with a ferocious intelligence, always with poetry and oddness, always with passion; while his work outside the boundaries of science fiction, as a writer of mainstream fiction, gained respect and attention from the wider world.” The American Gods author described Aldiss on Twitter as a “larger than life wise writer”, adding that the news “just hit me like a meteor to the heart”. A friend and drinking companion of Kingsley Amis, Aldiss counted CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien among his correspondents. His death was marked by names from across the science fiction writing community. Adam Roberts said he was “very sad” about Aldiss’s death, “though 92 is not a bad innings”. He added: “I grew up reading him: Hothouse in particular had an immense impact on me as a youngster, and the short story ‘Who Can Replace a Man?’, and inspired me with the desire to be a science fiction writer myself... He wrote many kinds of things, from mainstream novels to memoir and poetry, but it is as a grandmaster of science fiction that he will be remembered – a giant of the genre.” “Aldiss was one of the greats. I remember staying up all night as a teenager to read a tattered copy of Hothouse, before I even knew who he was. And the shock of Helliconia Spring, which was like nothing I’d read before,” said Jon Courtenay Grimwood. “He was stubborn, stroppy, and an inveterate raconteur, and it seemed sometimes that there was no great writer, from TS Eliot to Kingsley Amis to Dylan Thomas, that he hadn’t known or hadn’t been drinking with. He liked to shock, at least it seemed to me he did, and I’m not sure he ever really thought of himself as an SF novelist; more as a novelist who often wrote science fiction. Very good science fiction, obviously.”
Brian Aldiss, the “grand old man” of science fiction whose writing has shaped the genre since he was first published in the 1950s, has died at the age of 92.
Aldiss’s agent, Curtis Brown, and his son, Tim Aldiss, have announced that the author, artist, poet and memoirist died at home in Oxford in the early hours of 19 August. “Brian had celebrated his birthday with close friends and family and spoken to many close to him,” wrote Tim on Twitter as he announced the death of “our beloved father and grandfather”.
Aldiss was the author of science fiction classics including Non-Stop, Hothouse and Greybeard, as well as the Helliconia trilogy, which his agent said bridged “the gap between classic science fiction and contemporary literature”. His numerous short stories include Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, which was adapted into the Steven Spielberg film AI, while his Horatio Stubbs saga was based on his time during the war in Burma and the far east.
Aldiss was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Hugo and Nebula prizes for science fiction and fantasy, an honorary doctorate from the University of Reading, the title of grand master from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and an OBE for services to literature. In a 2013 profile of Aldiss for the Guardian, Stuart Kelly described him as “the grand old man of British science fiction”, saying that “few writers have contributed more” to speculative fiction.
In an introduction to a new edition of Hothouse, Neil Gaiman described Aldiss’s career as “enormous”. “It has recapitulated British SF, always with a ferocious intelligence, always with poetry and oddness, always with passion; while his work outside the boundaries of science fiction, as a writer of mainstream fiction, gained respect and attention from the wider world.” The American Gods author described Aldiss on Twitter as a “larger than life wise writer”, adding that the news “just hit me like a meteor to the heart”.
A friend and drinking companion of Kingsley Amis, Aldiss counted CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien among his correspondents. His death was marked by names from across the science fiction writing community.
Adam Roberts said he was “very sad” about Aldiss’s death, “though 92 is not a bad innings”. He added: “I grew up reading him: Hothouse in particular had an immense impact on me as a youngster, and the short story ‘Who Can Replace a Man?’, and inspired me with the desire to be a science fiction writer myself... He wrote many kinds of things, from mainstream novels to memoir and poetry, but it is as a grandmaster of science fiction that he will be remembered – a giant of the genre.”
“Aldiss was one of the greats. I remember staying up all night as a teenager to read a tattered copy of Hothouse, before I even knew who he was. And the shock of Helliconia Spring, which was like nothing I’d read before,” said Jon Courtenay Grimwood. “He was stubborn, stroppy, and an inveterate raconteur, and it seemed sometimes that there was no great writer, from TS Eliot to Kingsley Amis to Dylan Thomas, that he hadn’t known or hadn’t been drinking with. He liked to shock, at least it seemed to me he did, and I’m not sure he ever really thought of himself as an SF novelist; more as a novelist who often wrote science fiction. Very good science fiction, obviously.”